A Reply from the BBC

A few days ago the BBC replied to my complaint.  With all the discourteous hallmarks of a cut-and-paste job, I reproduce it below:



"Dear J R
Reference CAS-4878517-MK66WY
Thank you for contacting us again.
We appreciate that you were dissatisfied with our previous response and felt strongly enough to write to us again. We raised this again with our news colleagues and senior staff.
They respond: "We're afraid we do not agree that we have given a misleading impression. The Foreign Secretary had spoken of the UK no longer being ‘lashed’ to the EU, so expressing his doubts as to the economic benefits of the UK remaining in the single market. The report by Kamal Ahmed was a factual one, looking at the latest economic figures which show that the Eurozone has enjoyed its strongest growth for some years. His report was intended to put the relative fortunes of the UK and the EU in context for viewers.
"It was certainly not implying a BBC position on Brexit. The BBC does not have an opinion on Brexit or any other subject. The use of the GDP graph set out the relative performance of the UK and the EU over ten years. While we could have gone back many more years, we think a decade is sufficient to show recent trends. While the performance of individual countries has varied, we were looking at the EU as a whole. Last year the Eurozone enjoyed its strongest period of growth since 2007, as you acknowledge, and Kamal explained that while both the UK and the EU were hit by the recession in 2007, the UK recovered faster so that by 2012 the UK was top of the economic league as the rest of the EU suffered.
"Now growth in the UK has slowed, running at 1.8% last year (compared to more than 2% in 2013, 2014 and 2015), while the Eurozone grew by 2.5% last year, the closest it has been to the levels of 3% seen before the recession of 2007/8, and this was highlighted by Kamal. In a report with many figures, the graph was intended to convey the broad trends in a visual way, and was not intended to be seen as an impression of the UK's post Brexit prospects.
“Kamal’s use of the phrase ‘nearly 50%’ was also intended to convey information simply, to help viewers. He explains that the figure for UK exports to the EU is 48% when one considers goods, and 43% when goods and services are taken into account. This link shows the ONS summary: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/internationaltrade/articles/whodoestheuktradewith/2017-02-21
"However, we accept that the use of the phrase ‘nearly 50%’ is imprecise and we could have been clearer that not only do less than half of UK exports go to the EU, this proportion has been on a downward trend since 2006 (though the latest figures show that there has been a slight increase to 44% for goods and services, and 50% for goods alone). We have made this clear on the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications page on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications
"Of course, there is much debate among economists as to whether these levels of growth in the UK and EU are a blip or the new normal, and so these are trends to watch. The EU remains a large and important export market for the UK and whatever the future trading relationship, we think it is useful to consider how one side is faring in comparison with the other.'"
We have read and noted your further points here but don’t consider they suggest evidence of a possible breach of standards. Opinions do vary widely about the BBC and its output, but this does not necessarily imply there has been a breach of standards or of the BBC’s public service obligations.
For this reason, we regret we don’t have more to add to our previous correspondence, and so will not respond further or address more questions or points. If you are dissatisfied with this decision you may ask the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) to review it. Details of the BBC complaints process are available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle-complaint/ where you can read the BBC’s full complaints framework.
If you wish to ask the ECU to review this decision, you should contact it directly within 20 working days of receiving this reply. Please explain to the ECU why you believe there may have been a potential breach of standards or other significant issue to investigate. You can email ecu@bbc.co.uk, or write to: Executive Complaints Unit, BBC, Broadcast Centre, London W12 7TQ. Please include the case reference number we have provided in this reply.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
Hollie Bann
BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided."

I will post my reply tomorrow!

Situating the Appreciation

I have just finished reading this week's Spectator (apart from the bit by Matthew Parris who, irritatingly, "has not the slightest intention of shutting up") and was struck by an interesting observation from Douglas Murray's diary. He says:

"Everyone in New York asks about the knife crime in London.  I tell them it won't be sorted out because we've already decided what the cause can't be."

I think the same agument applies to Grenfell and Windrush!

BBC Bot Takes My Complaint Seriously

Immigration Hostilities

After I graduated from the RAF Staff College, I was posted to the Ministry of Defence as the Personal Staff Officer to a Senior Officer in the Defence Intelligence Staff.  Our department was responsible, amongst other things, for the administration of Service intelligence gathering and liaison with other intelligence agencies, at home and abroad.  Naturally, there was a great deal of paper work, most of it highly classified and requiring appropriate protection.  My boss, an Admiral, became challenged by a project to reduce the amount of historic classified material that was clogging up the registry system.  Unfortunately, this was not just a case of throwing a few files in the shredder.  Each document had to be reviewed individually and, if judged suitable for destruction, processed through signature and countersignature and records compiled for audit.  This was a hugely time-consuming and labour-intensive process. Undaunted, and in true Trafalgar spirit, there was a task requirement, a target, and milestones against which progress could be measured.  Things went well, initially, as the “low-hanging fruit” of lesser classified documents were dispatched to the incinerator.  However, the hopelessness of the task rapidly became apparent as more and more sensitive material was tackled, each document requiring greater scrutiny at progressively higher levels.  At times, new documents were being created at a faster rate than the old ones were being destroyed.  It was a bureaucratic nightmare of Der Zauberlehrling proportions.

I expect the majority of us feel that immigrants who have entered our country illegally should be sent back from whence they came? Give or take the odd humanitarian or political case, I expect most people would agree that the target for removal should be all of them?  I suppose the Home Office could put out a media campaign asking all illegal immigrants to own up and report to a remote airfield somewhere prior to being flown back to their country of origin by the first available means.  This probably would not work for the obvious reason that, having taken the trouble to get into this country illegally, such immigrants would be unlikely to surrender their hard-won position to a legal challenge. Presumably, successive Home Secretaries have cottoned-on to this impediment and applied other methods of rooting out people who should not be here.  If, as an illegal immigrant, you are being hunted down to be deported, you may well feel that the forces ranged against you are hostile.  On the other hand, as a law-abiding citizen who has just been the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a gang who should not be here, you may feel differently?

The fall-out from the Windrush debacle has exposed another side of Home Office business, the bungling of which has provided a bonanza of personal stories, viciously exploited by those affecting to be offended on behalf of others and the media to cast the Government in a dark and unfeeling light. In fairness to the Home Office, they need to manage and vet new arrivals, administer applications for people already here, and get rid of illegals all under the political banner of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands.  It may be that some of the Home Office servants may have ignored the old adage - when you are up to your arse in alligators, it’s easy to forget that the original aim was to drain the swamp.  The bureaucratic parallels with my earlier remarks about classified documents are obvious – illegal immigrants will be difficult and expensive to catch and deport.  There must be a temptation to go for the low-hanging fruit, in this case the generally law-abiding, who just want to apply to be British or, in the case of the Windrushes, perhaps forgotten to apply in the first place.  This is the heart of the problem.  Lionel Shriver, writing in the Spectator, cites “arcane rules to bureaucratic waterboarding: elaborate procedures, absurd documentation requirements, confiscatory fees and fickle decision-making.”  This is the hostile atmosphere which needs to change, not the hostile approach to tracking and dealing with illegal immigrants.  I wish Sajid Javid well (and I hope he has more success than we did in Defence Intelligence)!

Rudderless

I have never liked Amber Rudd, personally, nor warmed to her interpretation of modern Conservatism. Nevertheless, she was doing her job so her passing from an otherwise struggling government is regrettable. Meantime, I find it astonishing that the media should be concerned or surprised that he government has a plan to deal with illegal immigration - that's the, probably, hundreds of thousands of people who have fraudulently entered UK and are taking advantage of our facilities (to the detriment of those here legally and who are paying for their privileges). That a plan to reduce illegal immigration, in accordance with the manifesto, involves aims and targets and is being pursued vigorously is equally unremarkable, nay expected!

Speculation on who should replace her is natural but the media appears obsessed with the notion that the Prime Minister should find a new Home Secretary who supports remaining in Europe. This, apparently, is to preserve the delicate balance between leavers and remainers in the Cabinet. It is this delicate balance, of course, by ensuring that nothing of substance is agreed or carried forward, that is responsible for the lack of progress of government efforts to extricate ourselves from the EU. The delicate balance comprises the 50%, the remain fifth column, dedicated to overturning the Referendum. If Mrs May really believes in leaving the EU, she should appoint a Home Secretary who shares that vision. Amber Rudd will cause enough trouble on the back benches without appointing a further champion of sympathy within.

The new Home Secretary will have a difficult job fighting to fire storm of the Windrsush debacle, the embers of which will continue to be fanned by those with a grievance on behalf of those, apparently, affected.  A massive distraction for the media and public opinion could help – perhaps a plan to introduce ID cards?